Neuro: The Interview

Share.

Get the inside scopp on this cyberpunk shooter for the PC.

By Richard Aihoshi aka Jonric

Near the end of February, Russian-based developer Revolt Games and publisher Russobit-M announced Neuro, an interesting new first person shooter project that takes place within the same universe as the former¿s upcoming space combat sim, Homeplanet. Some years into the future, humanity developed a completely new form of space travel that brought nearby star systems within reach. Colonization naturally followed, and over the course of time, a number of the far-flung outposts grew into leading centers of industry and science. With both wealth and power at stake, it was probably inevitable that certain of these colonies would aspire to take control over their resources and destinies. Not surprisingly, political relationships became strained, and each passing year saw them moving closer to the declaring their independence from the scattered Earth Confederation.

Sorgo is one such planet; the game begins there before moving to a couple of other locations including a second world and a space station. Craig Richards is the main character, a psionic soldier in service to the Confederation who finds himself caught at the epicenter of a disagreement between the interests of Earth and those of the military clan Troiden. According to the early information available about Neuro, its gameplay is built on the player's special ability to take any living being under psi-control, a device that allows for the completion of objectives in rather untraditional ways. In addition, the overall theme is a very intriguing one, cyberpunk. As a result, we were glad to have the chance to find out more about the game in this Neuro Interview with Project Director Sergey Mironov who is also the Director-General of Revolt Games.

Action Vault: What kind of game is Neuro? What is the main idea behind it, what are your overall goals for the game, and how do you classify it in terms of its genre?

Sergey Mironov:

What is the Neuro? First of all it is a first person shooter game. I don't want to quote the press release as all who will read this interview most likely already know its content and now they are waiting for new details about the project. In short, Neuro is really new game. What can we expect from it? Sure, the new game world! In Neuro, it will be the world of sci-fi and cyberpunk. Then new heroes and new opponents. New game locations. This is what our players want and wait for, spending nights without a break near the monitors with their favorite games.

The basic idea of our game is new gameplay, based on an opportunity of the main hero to grasp the enemy¿s consciousness. I think it will be interesting.

As for the genre, we categorize Neuro as classical FPS, which means that there will not be any RPG or other genre elements in the game. The missions of the game will be various. For example, missions like "to creep and kill" are present in most FPS games, and they are not so original now. In my opinion, the greatest interest for the player is not the ultimate goal of mission, but more its realization concerning the gameplay. And in the gameplay, we have such special feature as the opportunity to take the enemy under psi-control. You can grasp his consciousness and operate him! In this way, we can make even missions like "to creep and kill" the most fascinating!

Action Vault: What is the gameworld like, what variety of locations does it include, and how will it differ from other science fiction action game settings?

Sergey Mironov:

As a matter of fact, both Homeplanet and Neuro belong to one game world, which is a fantastic, man-made world of the future - the world of cyberpunk. We would not like to create the game where the word cyberpunk will remain only the word from the press release. We¿ll try to create the kind of atmosphere that will give the players the impressions we feel when reading the creations of Gibson or viewing Matrix or Ghost in the Shell. Sure, the computer game has its limits and restrictions and it is impossible to transfer all gameworld like in books or films, but we¿ll try. It is difficult, but we aspire to this goal.

The action in the game will occur on two different planets and on a space station. In the beginning of the game, we¿ll appear often in the territory of a huge megalopolis on one of the planets. And on the other planet, there¿ll be for the most part open areas. There will be about 12 various locations in the game. Each of these locations will include game levels. For example, the location with our conditional name Space Station will have levels the Docks, the Spacecraft etc. I think some game locations were already presented in other games, for example, the Space Station. We just try to make it not similar to all that you saw earlier.